Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) (L) participates in the re-enactment of his swearing-in with Vice President Dick Cheney in the Old Senate Chambers on Capitol Hill in Washington on January 6, 2008. (UPI Photo/Kevin Dietsch)

John Davison "Jay" Rockefeller IV (born June 18, 1937) is the senior United States Senator from West Virginia. He was first elected to the Senate in 1984, while in office as Governor of West Virginia, a position he held from 1977 to 1985. Rockefeller moved to Emmons, West Virginia to serve as a VISTA worker in 1964, and was first elected to public office in the state, as a member of the House of Delegates, in 1966. Rockefeller was later elected Secretary of State in 1968 and was president of West Virginia Wesleyan College from 1973 to 1976.

As a great-grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, he is the only currently-serving politician of the prominent six-generation Rockefeller family and the only Democrat in what has been a traditionally Republican dynasty.

John Davison Rockefeller IV was born at New York Hospital in New York City to John D. Rockefeller III and Blanchette Ferry Hooker just 26 days after the death of his great-grandfather John D. Rockefeller. Jay Rockefeller graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1955 and from Harvard College in 1961 with an A.B. in Far Eastern Languages and History, after having spent three years studying Japanese at the International Christian University in Tokyo.

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